Service Employees International Union

They led the most powerful forces in healthcare -- the trade groups representing doctors, insurance companies, hospitals and drug makers. Any one of them could stall, if not derail, President Obama's hopes of overhauling the U.S. healthcare system. Instead, they stood with Obama before TV cameras at the White House and pledged their cooperation. For Obama, the show of unity gave momentum to perhaps his most ambitious domestic goal.

Workers at a hospital and two nursing homes in Hollister, Calif., have voted to remain in the Service Employees International Union rather than join a rival group launched by former officers of the giant labor organization. The election was the latest skirmish between the SEIU and the upstart National Union of Healthcare Workers, which has filed election petitions to represent nearly 100,000 employees in California.

The leaders of an Oakland union were removed from office Tuesday by their Washington bosses, the culmination of months of fighting over who will represent tens of thousands of home health aides. The Service Employees International Union served the officers of the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers West with a trusteeship notice Tuesday afternoon. It appointed its executive vice presidents, Eliseo Medina and Dave Regan, as trustees.

The former president of the union that represents Los Angeles County government workers has agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in connection with an alleged scheme to collect illicit consulting payments from a labor-related nonprofit, officials said Thursday. Alejandro Stephens, a longtime leader of the Service Employees International Union local, signed an agreement to plead guilty to one count of filing a false income tax return and two counts of mail fraud, the U.S. attorney's office said.

The ousted leaders of Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers West on Wednesday announced that they have formed a new union and intend to begin recruiting their former members, a continuation of brinkmanship between UHW and the Service Employees International Union. The new group is called the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and organizers are busily collecting union cards from UHW members, the first step toward recognition in workplaces.

The California Nurses Assn. on Wednesday secured a temporary restraining order against the Service Employees International Union, accusing it of harassing the board members of the Oakland-based group. The two influential nationwide unions have a long, acrimonious rivalry that reached a new height in March after they publicly battled over whether the SEIU should represent more than 8,000 nurses and other healthcare workers in Ohio. The dispute flared again at a labor conference in Dearborn, Mich.

In the 1960s and '70s, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange picketed with farmworkers and marched with Cesar Chavez, even serving jail time for the cause. In the 1980s, the Catholic nuns rallied behind janitors trying to unionize. Long known as friends to labor, today the sisters are on the other side of the picket line, locked in a clash with a union that wants to organize at a chain of hospitals the nuns operate throughout California.

Advocates for low-wage caregivers called on authorities Monday to investigate the spending practices of a Los Angeles union and a related charity that have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's leader. "This is very serious," County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose 1990s legislation allowed the union to organize home-care workers here, said of the financial transactions disclosed by The Times.

As a baggage runner and low-level security official, Maria Romero has worked for three years in the army of blue-collar functionaries who help keep the airlines operating at Los Angeles International Airport. The 41-year-old mother of three says she earns $11.25 an hour, searching aircraft cabins and lugging passenger bags from screening checkpoints to ticket counters at the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

Responding to Republican charges of foot-dragging, the Democratic chairman of the House labor panel said Tuesday that it is pursuing its inquiry into a spending scandal at the Service Employees International Union but taking care not to interfere with a criminal investigation. The Education and Labor Committee's top-ranked Republican, Rep.